Witnesses: Porco not in dorm

Rick Karlin Staff writer

Published 1:00 am, Monday, July 17, 2006

GOSHEN -- A fraternity brother of murder suspect Christopher Porco testified this afternoon that he didn't see Porco in the dorm lounge in the pre-dawn hours of November 15, 2004, even though Porco maintains he was asleep on a couch there, at the time his parents were being attacked in their Delmar home.

``No I did not,'' replied Novak, referring to the hours between 2 a.m. to 3:15 a.m. Later that afternoon, Novak testified that Porco received a call lasting about five minutes.

``He seemed relatively calm,'' Novak said of his fraternity brother. ``There was no panic or anything in his voice. He looked at me and said, `My parents are (expletive) dead and he walked past us.'''

Porco, 22, is accused of killing his father Peter Porco with an ax and nearly beating his mother Joan Porco to death. Defense lawyers for Porco say he was asleep in the dorm lounge while that killing took place.

Novak said he had spoken with Porco earlier that Sunday night but that he didn't see him later, as fraternity members and other students gathered to watch the movie Shrek.

Another student, Tisha Abrams, agreed. ``I walked through the lounge and he was not there,'' Abrams said. ``I walked through his suite and he was not there.'' She explained that after the movie ended she went back to her dorm but returned to the dorm where the fraternity brothers lived at approximately 3:15 a.m. to give a CD to one of them.

Prosecutors so far have been working to poke holes in the defense's contention that Porco couldn't have killed his father because he was in Rochester at the time of the slaying. Last week, a pair of Thruway toll collectors testified they saw Porco's yellow Jeep at the Albany and Rochester toll plazas before and after the killings.

Prosecutors also have said they have security videotapes that will show the jeep leaving the campus parking lot.

Defense lawyer Laurie Shanks tried to cast doubt on Novak's story, asking with incredulity, why Porco's fraternity brothers didn't try to comfort him when he learned his parents were dead (he later found out his mother had survived the attack).

``He walked right by us and we didn't know how to react,'' Novak said. Novak, under questioning by Shanks, also said he sought legal advice from his uncle, a lawyer, about how to halt the barrage of police calls and frequent questioning he received after the attacks.

``It's not that I didn't want to talk to the police, but it was interfering with my studies,'' he said.